Injuries Aren't Junior's Only Pain

Brickyard 400

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Is Also Dealing With Bad Cars And Rumors Of A Family Feud.

August 8, 2004|By Ed Hinton, Sentinel Staff Writer

INDIANAPOLIS -- Limping with his painful burns, burdened with his emotional conflicts about family and team, Dale Earnhardt Jr. carries the weight of his world into today's Brickyard 400.

Saturday he tried somberly to stem rumors of rifts among his stepmother, his real mother and himself.

In subdued ambiguities, he spoke of a troubled team in free-fall from its championship form of early season, run by an uncle and a cousin he said he wouldn't abandon for all the trophies in the world. This, though championships have seemed to be an obsession in the Earnhardt family; his late father won a NASCAR-record tying seven.

Softly yet graphically, he described burns on his left leg that have not healed according to medical prognosis, leaving his every step a shot of agony. Driving is easy compared to walking, he said.

But what stuck worst in his craw was admitting that last week he gave way to a relief driver in mid-race, not because of the pain from his injuries, but "because I could."

He was just fed up with an ill-prepared, fitfully handling car from which "parts and pieces were falling off" and decided enough was enough.

"We have a driver who's trying to get right," he said, "and a team that's not right."

Yet of his crew's two chiefs, Tony Eury Sr. and Tony Eury Jr., he said, "I really don't know what it would be like to go to a race with anybody but them. I don't know if I'd want to, really. They're family . . . how much I care about them overrides the worst season you could have. . . . It's more important than any championship."

Saturday, he qualified fifth in a Chevrolet radically redesigned from what he's been driving and tried to show enthusiasm for it. But somehow it didn't seem to help his mood.

Words came easiest to him in describing what it was like inside the cloud of fire that blew his world open for all to see, though he said the "slow progression to our demise" had started weeks before that.

Sheer love of racing kept Earnhardt from relaxing on a rare Sunday off from the NASCAR tour on July 18. He agreed to drive in an American Le Mans Series sports car race at Sonoma, Calif. During that morning's pre-race practice, his prototype Corvette spun, slammed into a retaining wall and burst into flames.

A video showed the fire engulfing him in his uniform and helmet, which protected him from far worse injury but left him with second-degree burns on his chin, neck and legs.

Contrary to some reports, Earnhardt said he wasn't knocked unconscious.

"Maybe `disoriented' might be a good word for it," he said Saturday. "One of the things that often happens when a driver wrecks a car is that you find yourself being disappointed over the wreck. . . . I didn't expect the car to burst into flames like it did. And so I was just sitting there, disappointed because I had just ruined the weekend for everybody [on the team] . . .

"When the car burst into flames, it was kind of a surreal moment. I couldn't believe I was sitting in a ball of fire. So there was about three seconds of, `What the [expletive] do I do now?' "

He dragged himself out and got immediate assistance from the rescue workers.

But that was just the beginning of this ordeal.

Dale Earnhardt's widow, third wife Teresa Earnhardt, is Dale Jr.'s stepmother. But in such times of pain only a real mother will do, even as a son approaches age 30, and so Brenda Jackson, Dale Earnhardt's second wife, came to her son's side.

When Dale Jr. began flying to races on the private jets of other drivers -- first Matt Kenseth, then Tony Stewart -- "Everybody thought that for some reason my stepmother didn't want my mother flying on the company plane," Earnhardt said Saturday.

"Teresa wouldn't be like that," he continued. "She knows that I needed my mom to help me with my wraps [bandages] and stuff."

As for all the wounds, those on his neck and right leg have been healing, he said, but "there's one on the upper left thigh that's about four inches by two inches; there's one on the back of my [left] leg, above the knee that's about five inches by five inches. There's one on the back of my leg below the knee that's about the size of a silver dollar."

Thus the pronounced limping through the garages and pits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Since his injury, yielding to relief drivers the past two races, he has dropped from a close second to points leader Jimmie Johnson to third, behind Jeff Gordon.

"[But] I don't think our slump started two weeks ago," he said. "It's been a lot longer than that. It's been eight or 10 weeks ago. I can't pinpoint it. That's the frustration of it."

Earnhardt won the season-opening Daytona 500 and two more races in the spring.

"[But lately,] we've got a 20th-place car, and it's difficult to get a top 10 finish with a 20th or 25th place car," he said.